Breaking Up
by NeonGolden
Summary: #04 Songfic: Breakin' Up - Rilo Kiley. SLASH! BifDerby, BifGord. Bif and Derby are breaking up, bit by bit, and Bif spends a lot of time wondering why he's so concerned over Gord who is seemingly oblivious.
1. Chapter 1

**87 - Breaking Up  
**Bully

_It's not as if New York City burned down to the ground once you drove away  
It's not as if the sun won't shine when clouds up above wash the blues away._

_Are we breaking up? Are we breaking up?  
Is there trouble between you and I?  
Did my heart break enough, did it break enough, this time?_

_Here's to all the pretty words we will never speak.  
Here's to all the pretty girls you're gonna meet. _

_Am I breaking up? Am I breaking up?  
Is there trouble on the line?  
Did your heart break enough, did it break enough, this time?_

_Feels good to be free. _

_Betrayal is a thorny crown, you wear it well, just like a king.  
Revenge is the saddest thing, honey I'm afraid to say, you deserve everything. _

_Am I breaking up? Are we breaking up?  
Is there trouble between the lines.  
Did your heart break enough, did it break enough, this time?_

_Feels good to be free._

**_Chapter One_**

Ideas don't come that easily to me. I'm not stupid, I don't get bad grades (actually, of course, I get excellent grades, but even without the money, I wouldn't be failing), I don't come across as thick, but I'm not really a leader. I box, that's what I'm good at, standing in the ring and seeing people's moves ahead of time, letting them take one blow so I can take three, adding up the amount of damage I can take to get them off their guard, pushing on and on, feeling my head ring and my hands bruise as I weave and punch. That's what I'm good at, and that is so utterly different to affairs of the heart that I become lost at sea. It was so sudden when things changed for me, I didn't know where my head was. I wasn't coming or going, I was rocking and stuck somewhere, and the whole world was crumbling into pieces. I was Derby's man, his right hand, his body guard and his entertainment when he needed it – and then suddenly I was none of those things, I was something entirely different from anything I had ever been before. I was spiralling into madness.

Harrington House, Thursday afternoon, Derby was sitting in an armchair. He had his legs stretched out before him, a glass of scotch in his hand, half asleep with the warmth and the alcohol, and I was there with him, breathing in the scent of his cologne. It was too early to be like that, really, but Derby starts early when he does (and that's quite often), and I was feeling complacent and tired. The warmth of the fire was comfortingly pleasant in comparison to the chill of the winter outside. He yawned, looked at me and cocked an eyebrow.  
"You know, Bif, that greaseball has been saying things about me that I don't entirely approve of."  
"You mean Vincent? What's he been saying?"  
"Oh, I don't know. Gord was the one who told me, you ask him. Actually, it pertained to me and you. But he certainly needs taking down a peg or two, don't you agree?" Gord. That little bitch, always gossiping away. If it wasn't for him and his loose tongue this whole situation would have been entirely different. "You don't think you could give him a beating for me, do you, dear boy? Protect my honour and all that?" Derby's British drawl was more languid than usual, the scotch getting to him, he had to talk slower to keep up the accent.  
"I...yeah I guess. What do you mean it pertained t me and you?" I was so resigned to doing what he told me, I would hardly have even thought about it had he not mentioned that it had something to do with me.  
"Oh, I just think maybe we ought to be more careful. It just wouldn't do for daddy to find out about our arrangement." No, it wouldn't do at all. I sighed inwardly, this was the problem with it, the problem I had been struggling with on some level for the entire time. I suppose that nothing comes from nowhere, and the way Derby talked about it you could think that our 'arrangement' was nothing more than casual, emotionless releasing of frustrations upon one another, but as far as I was concerned it was something quite different from that – something deeper and sweeter and more precious. Anyway, I hadn't expected him to want me to take down Johnny Vincent right away, but when he tipped his head to one side and said, unsmiling:  
"Well? Are you still here?" I was thrown back to reality. I just let myself out, and went straight over to the greasers little patch by the bike sheds, hoping to find him there. And I did. And a lot of other trouble. I'm a boxer. It's hard to take me down, but Vincent and his boys don't have any code, any respect for the art of fighting, they just bite and scratch and smash at you until something happens, and it's a weakness of mine I suppose that I can't stand up to that forever. I took some, he took some, and we parted in a kind of neutrality. Neither of us was really in it I suppose. It was the usual game these days, to fall into fights with each other at Derby's command more so than for our own enmity. Vincent has his own troubles, just as I have mine.

So I took myself off to the boy's dorm, not wanting to return to Derby looking like I'd just been messed up, especially after his nice reaction after that thug Hopkins beat me at boxing. I showered quickly and I was fixing my shirt and my hair in the mirror, checking the damage when the thought came to me. Vincent had still done a number on me, despite our mutual almost-apathy. My lip was bleeding in a way that meant I couldn't really stop it, every time I moved my mouth it broke open again, and my ribs felt like someone had run me over with a truck, bent in and bruised, like my lungs were brushing up against them every time I took a breath. My knuckles were bleeding too, leaving little dots of red on the sink and on the towel I was using to dry off my hair after the shower. The cuts stung from the hot water, and the pain was seeping in now, the adrenaline wearing off and leaving an all over general ache. My shirt was bloodied, but I put it on again any way because it was either that or go across from the boy's dorm to Harrington House shirtless, and it was damn cold in winter.

Anyway, this thought hit me when I was putting my shirt on, or to be more specific, when I was fixing the collar to make it straight. I noticed a bruise on my neck, something I didn't remember Vincent doing to me, and I touched it to see if it hurt, and it did. It was then I realised that it wasn't Vincent who had done it, but Derby, last night, with his mouth and his teeth, biting into my skin, sucking on it, bruising me. And then the two thoughts connected. Derby had done this whole thing to me, really. I pretty much hated Vincent, he was a jerk, and common, and annoying with his macho little group of leather clad idiots. I had fought him often, partly because I could and partly because he antagonised me. But this time- this time Derby had pushed me into it, to defend his honour as he had said, half mockingly, because Vincent had called him a fag. I didn't see how it could have helped, me running to his rescue, but Derby couldn't let that sort of thing go, he just couldn't let it go, because he knew his entire existence rested on being tough enough to keep his position here and lever himself up after this place was done with, fulfil his dream of having some real power over real people and not just ridiculous school boys. It irks me, that, and his pretention of Britishness, simply because it seems unnecessary when you are of real lineage, like he and I are. I think what hurt most was that he had been so eager to refute such a rumour, when quite frankly, it was the truth.

Derby and I have been doing this thing for years now and it's not such a big secret any more, among the preps at least. I know most of them are quite aware of what we do at night when Derby locks us up in his grand bedroom; they know that it isn't just Derby's expensive scotch keeping us warm. And Gord especially, because he actually walked in on us once, and I had looked straight into his eyes from my position between Derby's legs and silently begged him not to say anything. He hadn't. He'd smiled at me, infuriatingly unflustered, and actually winked one of his great brown eyes. I suppose he thought my coyness was funny. And while Derby is really quite affectionate sometimes, rubbing his hands through my hair, touching my shoulders, leaning round me when I'm working, he is at other times so cold and aloof I can hardly recognise him from one moment to the next. I am not a big thinker. Sometimes I say things and they sound wrong, and sometimes I act tough and make threats and fight just because it is an alternative route to thought. Quite uncouth, quite thuggish, but easy. In some ways, I am no better than Hopkins or any of the bullies around here. It was like a sudden shock, this feeling of resentment towards Derby. Since we got together – I say got together, since we started fucking – I had hardly had a negative thought towards him. That's my stupid streak; my mind puts up blocks and stops me from seeing things even when my unconscious does. That's what my therapist says anyway, I'm almost sure it's a load of crap. So the first thing I do is go and settle it with Gord, because he was the one that started this whole thing. I know it's sort of a strange way to do this, the wrong way round pretty much, I should have just gone straight to Derby.  
"Derby," I would have said, "I'm hurt that you made me go and fight Johnny Vincent when all he did was say we were having a relationship and that's the truth. It upsets me that you see me as such a liability." Or something like that, probably far less reasonable. And he would have looked at me with his funny, cool expression and smiled drunkenly at me, laughed like it was no big deal.  
"Don't be so silly," he would have said, and pulled me down to sit next to him on the great leather sofa. "You aren't a liability, Bif, I rely on you for so many things." And just like that I would have been reassured, mollified, and my life would have stayed the same, easy and simple and full of the familiar distant affection I had grown used to. But no. Instead I decided to avoid that all together, and like a fool I went to find Gord.

It made matters worse that when I found Gord it was after a good hour of trawling round the school and then eventually Bullworth town, by which time I had managed to work myself into a misplaced rage against him and his gossiping, in fact against his entire annoying arrogant persona. I finally found him lurking beneath the pier on the beach, having a shady cigarette, although I had never seen him smoke before.  
"Vendome!" I growled, and he looked at me guiltily, hiding the cigarette behind him.  
"Ah, Taylor..." he started, but I already had him against the back wall of the pier, pinning him there with one arm while the other back handed him across the face. "Jesus!" he coughed, cigarette smoke spluttering from between his lips and into my face. "What on earth's gotten into you?" His false English accent made me angrier.  
"What the hell did you have to go and spread that shit to Derby for, huh? I had to go and take down Johnny Vincent again because of you, and I don't think he gives a shit." Gord looked genuinely lost, straining away from me with an expression of distaste mixed in with the confusion.  
"I don't know what you mean," he whined, "let go of me, I'll ruin my sweater on this dirty wood."  
I loosened my grip a little, but stayed in his way, stopping him from escaping.  
"You told Derby that Johnny Vincent said he was a fag," I spat. He shrugged then, infuriatingly unconcerned.  
"Well, he did say that."  
"Yes, and now Derby is paranoid that people are spreading things about him!"  
"Oh I see," he gave me a knowing little smile. "Is he being extra careful? Depriving you of your regular dose? Mm?"  
"No, idiot." I growled "He's cutting me off, bit by bit, or maybe..." I stopped myself from talking, supposing that Gord couldn't possibly understand this sort of complexity of feeling, but my thoughts ran on, to ever more dizzying heights of paranoia and misery. _Maybe he never cared about me at all, maybe this is just some excuse to stop being close to me. He's been drifting lately, drifting away from me, moving more and more towards Pinky, going on dates with her, leaving me alone to pick up his pieces. Maybe this was the final straw. _Gord was watching me, his eyes a little bit narrowed. He sighed suddenly and leaned back against the pier again, one leg bent, quite relaxed.  
"You're quite tragic you know," he said, and I glared at him.  
"What do you mean?"  
"You and him, you're a mess. You don't understand what it means to fool around with guys at school, not like I do."  
"What do you understand? You're just a man slut, you don't have a reputation to uphold, your only reputation is that you're easy." I had meant to offend him, but he just snorted a laugh through his nose.  
"Exactly, that's why I'm so much happier than you are. You are destined to be with Derby Harrington for the rest of your life, hanging on to his coat tails while he becomes successful. Because whatever else happens, he will marry Pinky – or some other stupid girl – and you will still love him, but he won't ever be with you, not how you want. So your life will be nothing more than a story full of misery and loneliness and dissatisfaction. Your problem is you expect too much. No, your problem is you actually love him."  
"I don't," I whispered, but it was pointless to even say it. He had me, he had me dead to rights and nothing I could say or do now would dissuade him – or me – of the truth. I loved Derby, he would never love me, and if I didn't do something about it then my life would be like that, just as he had said – misery and loneliness and dissatisfaction. I was lost for anything to do, I was lost so utterly and totally, and it was such a foreign feeling for me that I just stood there, gazing down at my nice brown boots and letting the thoughts rampage through my head.

I felt a hand on my arm, and looked up suddenly. Gord caught my eye and his gaze seemed calculating. I made to pull away but something stopped me. I let him regard me with that usual look on his face, scorn and faux-boredom, as though all of this that was happening to me was quite apart from anything he could ever care about. He made a little humming noise of almost concern in his throat though, his hand on the top of my arm, and suddenly I was overcome with this madness. I put both of my hands on his shoulders and body slammed him to the ground, landing on top of him and stifling his startled cry with my own mouth. I kissed him, hard, feeling the unfamiliar lips against mine, the smell of him, the feel of his body beneath mine. It was so different to Derby, who while still a bit smaller than me physically, had a certain strength about him, an overbearing superiority that came across in every movement, every word. Gord was skinnier and shorter, his hips dug into me as I crouched over him and he tasted like cigarette smoke and other peoples' kisses. His muffled complaints disintegrated quickly, and he reacted to me with a soft sound, letting his head roll back in the sand as I peppered kisses down his neck, hardly knowing what I was doing. Derby would never have allowed me to do this, never. He would have flung me away if I tried to press him into a kiss, scowling, shouting at me for being so ridiculous, for trying to exert any kind of power over me. Gord let me kiss him, quite willingly, his body softening and relaxing, no longer tense and shocked. He murmured, pulled his hand up to touch under my chin, lifting my lips to his again, and he kissed me properly, and brilliantly. I suppose I should have known Gord was a brilliant kisser, the amount of practice he got, but it still surprised me. I pulled back, gasping, my head full of the smell of him, the careless sexiness of him. I felt at that moment that I had never met anyone more effortlessly sexual that Gord, and thoughts of Derby turned suddenly into negative comparisons – his thick lips and low, small, suspicious eyes against Gord's brilliant, expressive face; his aloof, far away attitude against Gord's bizarre flirtations; the way he hardly touched me when we fucked apart from to pull my clothes off and rake his nails on my flesh against Gord's fingers flitting over my skin like butterflies. I seemed so far away from myself that I hardly heard Gord's voice in my ear as he whispered:  
"You know this is an entirely bad idea." His voice was very soft, and while not entirely unhappy, tinted with something that knocked me out of my dream like state. He was right, this wasn't a good idea. If Derby found out even this much had happened we were both ruined, he would make our lives hardly worth living. I scrambled away from him, leaving him stretched out on the sand. I was breathing hard and so was he, I could see his chest rising and falling quickly. He sat up and looked up at me, raising an eyebrow.  
"Going to run back to Derby? Tell him you never meant it?" I was, I couldn't answer him, I didn't know what to do with myself, so I just ran away.

I slept in the beach house that night, although it was technically property of Jimmy Hopkins these days he hadn't bothered to lock the door. I curled myself up on the battered mattress on the floor and tried to sleep, but nothing came. My shirt was still bloodied, my lip was still sore, my rips were still aching, but most of all my mind was spinning with Gord's practically pitying expression and Derby's frank uncaring tone of voice. I hated to think of myself as so helpless, it was maddening because I wasn't used to this sort of thing. I was one of the toughest guys at school, the boxing champion, not some sad little faggot pining over his distant lover. What a fucking disgrace. What the hell would the other guys think if they knew about this? That I'd lost my mind, that's what, that I was turning into some pathetic little nerd or something like that. I tried desperately to get a hold of myself, but it was ridiculously difficult to banish all those thoughts from my head. I hated myself at that moment, so deeply and honestly that I could hardly believe it was me having those thoughts. I hated myself, I hated Derby and I hated Gord, I hated Johnny Vincent even more than normal and I hated Bullworth and all the losers and the poor people swarming all over the town. I suppose I slept eventually, because I woke and it was morning and Jimmy Hopkins was looking at me with an incredulous expression. It was not a pleasant experience, to open one's eyes upon waking to find that ugly face staring down at you. I scrambled up and stood before him, defensive and irritated.  
"You have a problem?" I growled, and he stood up to me so that we were face to face, although he had to look up to catch my eye.  
"Maybe I do, rich boy, what are you doing in _my_ beach house? I won it fair and square; you're not welcome here anymore." He glanced up and down at my blood stained shirt. "What the hell happened to you?" He stepped back from me a little bit, apparently I wasn't such a threat now he saw I was hurt, but I was so pissed off from the night before, from having to sleep on that crappy mattress, from waking up to find him there, I wanted to fight him anyway. He had moved off though, circling me, and I had to spin to keep up with him.  
"Nothing," I told him, backing off, overcome suddenly with fatigue. "I'll go already, whatever."

The sun was bright and bleak, everything was grey, even the sand, even the water, as if to match my frame of mine. I wondered if Derby had even missed me, had even noticed that I hadn't returned from his errand to take down Vincent. It was a Friday and that meant that class was on, but I couldn't face it at all. I knew I had Math, or maybe Biology, and either one I could skip without too much trouble thanks to the bribes I'd handed out first thing in the year. What I really wanted to do was crawl into a hole and not come out until my head stopped spinning, but I took the bus back to school instead and sneaked past the prefects back into Harrington House. I hadn't expected Derby to be there really, not that he went to class all that often, but usually he would have been out somewhere, shopping or making someone's life really unpleasant. But he was there, in the common room area, smoking a cigar despite the fact that it was still only nine in the morning. He had his head leaning against his hand, he looked almost despairing, and for a moment I had a brief flash of hope that he had been worried about me because I had been absent for the whole night. My hopes were quickly dissipated when he began to speak and I realised he was actually just on the phone.  
"Of course, daddy," he said, his voice tolerant but with a hint of annoyance dancing on the edge, hardly noticeable but definitely there. "That is such a ridiculous rumour I can hardly believe you even thought for a moment it could be true. Yes, I know that, but I wish you wouldn't talk to me about such things, it's quite disgusting even the thought of it." My heart felt like it was twisted and breaking, and although I rationalised that this was just Derby's lip service to his father, I felt underneath everything that he really meant it, that he thought the whole concept of me and him to be distasteful, disgusting. He hadn't seen me hovering in the doorway behind him, but as soon as he clicked the phone call to an end I strode in front of him, angry again just as I had been last night with Gord.  
"What the hell was that?" I growled at him, and he looked up at me, momentarily surprised. He quickly moulded his face back into his usual cool, knowing look and actually had the arrogance to look disapproving.  
"You don't speak to me like that, Bif. And that was my father, asking me what the hell the rumours going round that I was a homosexual were all about. I had to reassure him, of course, that it was all nonsense. What on earth is the matter with your shirt?"  
"I bled on it," I told him, and those four words were not enough to bring out the true extent of the resentment I felt for that fact.  
"Well you should change, it's unsightly."  
"And you're a bastard," I shouted. It was out of my mouth and into the air and there was nothing I could do to stop it, so I rolled on, letting the words fall from me like I had been gutted and my accusations and fears were blood and guts flowing out of me and onto the floor. "You never really gave a shit about me, or anything I did. You've been using me all along, you toy with my emotions just so you can get me to do your dirty work. And I was happy to do it because I thought you actually cared about me, but you don't at all. Do you? You're such a total bastard. You couldn't care less about anything but yourself and your power, you're obsessed with power. You're driven by power and disgusting cigars and scotch. I don't know how I thought for a second you were anything except inhuman." I stopped, searching for more words and finding none. Derby was looking at me, his expression utterly unchanged.  
"I see," he said, his voice was very cold. "If that's how you feel you might as well get out of my sight."  
So I did.


	2. Chapter 2

Gord was under the pier again, not smoking this time but sitting and filing his nails. I would have laughed at him if I hadn't felt so desolate. He was hardly ever in Harrington House these days, I had thought he spent most of his time wandering around town, or school, somewhere, finding easy girls and boys to make out with. I was actually surprised that he was there again, on his own, I hadn't figured Gord as a person who was comfortable in his own company. I sat next to him and he looked at me nervously, disturbed by my demeanour.  
"So?" he asked, and his tone suggested a much deeper question, a longer and more complicated one that he couldn't find the words to make.  
"I don't know," my answer was equally inferior. There was so much I could have said, but Gord wasn't the person to say it to. Maybe no one could have been. He sighed. Rain started to fall in little dribs and drabs from the sky, wetting the sand on either side of the protection of the pier. The temperature fell a little; I shivered and pulled my knees into myself to keep warm. Gord didn't seem to notice the cold, he just continued to file his nails and occasionally to look at me with a calculating gaze.  
"You know," he said after what felt like a very long while, "I've been having it off with the new kid."  
"What? Hopkins?" I stared at him, twisting my mouth in distaste. "Why are you telling me that?"  
"I just wanted something to say," he admitted.  
"Since when?"  
"Since the start of the term."  
"But why?"  
"Don't you think he's much more interesting than anyone else here?" He was actually avoiding my gaze, as though he was ashamed, but I knew that wasn't possible. Gord wasn't ashamed of anything he did, really, he was actually too open about most of his exploits. But Hopkins? That was particularly low, even for Gord. Worse than Lola. "Don't you see the attraction?" He had turned to me again, his eyes sparkling with mischief.  
"Not really," I told him, "I'm not interested in guys, Gord." I don't know why I said it. I guess I was used to saying it, and it was true really. I wasn't interested in guys, I was interested in Derby, and he wasn't a man, he was a god. Gord snorted, apparently not seeing my logic.  
"Could have fooled me," he scoffed. "Last night seemed to say otherwise." I winced, not wanting to meet his bright eyes but unable to look away.  
"Yeah, about that..."  
"It meant nothing; you were distraught, not in control of your actions. Of course, I understand." He was mocking me, and that pissed me off. I pushed his shoulder, a clumsy blow from a sitting position, but it unbalanced him and he had to steady himself with one hand. "Fine," he huffed, crossing his arms over his chest in mock offence. "Bullworth isn't going to burn down to the ground if you and Derby break up, you know."  
"It's impossible to have a proper conversation with you. You're always trying to push my buttons." He knew how to get to me, that was his problem, and I don't even know how he managed it because we didn't really talk all that often.  
"Well it's not that hard," he laughed, "I've watched how you behave with him, I know your type." He began rubbing wet sand from the hand he had used to steady himself on the ground. "And I speak nothing but the truth." We sat in silence for a while longer, him picking grains of sand from under his manicured nails and me staring into the dull sky trying to numb my mind.  
"Do you ever just want to get out of here?" I asked him.  
"Not really. I like it here."  
"How can you like it? What is there to like?"  
"Well, we get to be better than all the poor kids; we have a better dorm, better clothes, better grades. There are plenty of willing conquests around for me to have fun with. I don't have to be at home with my family. The drama here is quite interesting. All I really have to do is keep out from under Derby's feet when he's in a bad mood."  
"Why? He likes you enough doesn't he?"  
"Hm...Maybe too much." He twisted his mouth, non-committal. I leaned into his frame of vision.  
"What's that supposed to mean?"  
"Nothing." But I could read his face.  
"Oh, no. Not with Derby too?" I wasn't even angry with him, I was just despairing. At least he had the dignity to look ashamed of himself.  
"It was before I knew you and him were sort of official, and he didn't exactly fill me in."  
"Fucking shit."  
"I know." I thought that was partly an apology, and it was hard to be properly angry with Gord because he was so entirely self-centred and thoughtless he could never have done anything really vindictive. It was Derby who had done it, Derby who had thought it through and come out with the conclusion that I wasn't all that important to him compared to a little cheap night with the school slut. It made me cold inside.

Weeks past and I hardly saw Derby at all. He passed me in the Harrington House dorm once, and he didn't look at me. He looked just the same, and that didn't surprise me. He was unchangeable, nothing affected him at all. In comparison, I felt like my whole identity was falling apart. I threw myself into boxing, staying at the boxing club from the end of lessons until the morning after, sleeping upstairs in the comfortable chairs like a homeless person. I hardly ever returned to Harrington House, and Derby hardly ever visited the boxing club, so we avoided each other. Life went on. I saw Gord though, all the time. He seemed to be everywhere, lounging outside the boxing club, wandering around on the beach, sitting on the steps outside Harrington House making lewd comments at passersby. It was as though he was following me, and I didn't really mind. His presence was quite comforting, it was just difficult to think serious thoughts when Gord was chattering on about his shopping or gossiping about the events at Bullworth. It was a Saturday, and I had been at the boxing club all day when I first saw him with Hopkins. He was almost a head taller than him, which was why it looked so funny when Hopkins handed him a bunch of flowers and Gord smiled and laughed with excitement like a little girl. And then Hopkins moved in to kiss him, wrapping his thick arms around Gord's slim waist and pushing those thick lips against his mouth clumsily, indelicately. I felt as though I was frozen to the spot, searching desperately to identify the twisting, sickening feeling that was rising in my chest and stomach. Gord pulled back, gasping with exhilaration, and I heard Hopkins speak.  
"Yeah, thanks," he said, and then turn away as though he was just going to leave. I still hadn't moved from the door of the club, so when Gord looked around him, his lips still wet from the messy kiss, he caught my eye. He gave me a playful wink and began to walk over to me. Jealousy. Oh God. Jealousy, that's what it was I was feeling.  
"Hey, Bif," he said, and then paused before saying: "What's the matter with you?" He must have picked up on my expression of abject horror, but all I could do now was stare at his shining brown eyes and his swollen red lips. "Bif?" He waved a hand in front of my face. "Did I traumatise you just then? Poor little Bif, such a prude."  
"I'm not a prude," I snapped, suddenly angry at his patronising tone. The jealousy in my stomach turned to bile and I pushed past him. Sometimes, being a champion boxer is a problem. It's what I do best, so sometimes I do that when I should have done something else – like talking, or thinking, or just walking away. So when Gord reached out and grabbed my arm, opening his mouth as though to speak, I punched him in the nose. He swayed back, a hand coming up to his face that was actually bleeding, his expression full of astonishment.  
"Fucking hell, Bif, that was uncalled for," he whined, dabbing at the blood on his chin with his fingers ineffectually. "Oh, damn it I'm going to get blood on my aquaberry." I suddenly had the overwhelming urge to fling myself on him again, to wrap my arms around him and apologise for taking it out on him when it wasn't his fault at all, for potentially ruining his precious aquaberry sweater, for hurting him, for being jealous of Hopkins as though I expected anything from him when he was so easy and so free.

Instead, I took him back inside the club, leading him by the arm while he snuffled blood and complained about his sweater, which seemed to be his primary concern. I made him sit and tip his head back, and then wearily I went to find some cotton wool for him to mop himself up with. There were plenty of first aid supplies around for the boxers' bloody noses and bruised up faces. When I came back he was leaning forward with his elbows in his knees and his head in his hands.  
"Are you alright?"  
"Yeah," his voice was quite muffled. I thought for one horrible moment that he was crying, but when he looked up I realised he had actually been trying to keep the blood off his sweater by leaning away from it. "No thanks to you." He pouted and I didn't react, I just pressed a bunch of cotton wool into his hand and guided that hand up to his nose. He sat with his hand to his face, looking as sulky as one can look when most of their face is obscured by bloody cotton wool. "I had something to ask you, as well," he said after a while, wincing as speaking made his nose hurt.  
"Really?" I didn't want to hear it, I had a feeling somehow that I wasn't going to like it, but I let him go on anyway.  
"Why is Derby really away from school?" he said, his voice a combination of seriousness and delight in the action of spreading gossip. I blinked at him.  
"He's away?"  
"What? You didn't know? I assumed you'd be the one to ask."  
"No. He didn't tell me. We haven't spoken for a while." My throat felt like it was closing up. Derby had gone and he hadn't even told me he was going, hadn't made any effort to fill me in. That hurt somehow. Although I could hardly have expected him to have filled me in on his travel plans when we were hardly speaking it still hurt.  
"That's still going on is it?" Gord interrupted my thoughts. Could he have been any more tactless? I wanted to punch him again but I held back.  
"Didn't he say why he was going?"  
"The official story is that he's visiting his father who is unwell, but I don't buy it. His father has never been unwell in his life, I don't see why he should start now."  
"I suppose he's getting older..." My mouth was working on autopilot, I couldn't get the image of Derby getting into a car and driving away from Bullworth out of my head. What if he didn't come back? What if he had gone to another school, or another city, and I would never see him again? Despite all the hate I had been harbouring for him, I couldn't help but feel betrayed and actually terrified at the thought of his face, his body, his voice being out of my life forever. I realised Gord was still talking and I was ignoring him, so when he looked at me expectantly, as if waiting for an answer I didn't have one.  
"Well?"  
"I don't know anything, alright."  
"I asked you if you had any plans for tonight, Bif, where have you been?" He looked annoyed and tired out for some reason; I wondered what he'd been getting up to these last few weeks. Probably lots of sordid things with Hopkins. I tried not to think about it.  
"Not really," I said, and his face brightened a little.  
"Excellent, you can come back to Harrington with me then. You haven't been there for so long, people are starting to wonder whether you'd dropped out or something."  
"I've been going to classes," I said, defensively, and Gord laughed.  
"Huh, well you're the only one. It's not like Derby's there for you to avoid any more. That's what you've been doing isn't it? Avoiding him?"  
"No."  
"You've forgotten how to make conversation, when did you last actually talk to anyone? You're becoming a hermit, and I won't have it." It was funny seeing him try and be stubborn and commanding with his nose all swollen up and red. Quite endearing really. I thought it might be alright to see the Harrington boys again, without the threat of Derby turning up and having to argue with him again. In a way, it was almost a positive thing that he had gone. As soon as that thought entered my head I dismissed it, I couldn't do without him. I missed him horribly.

I had planned to meet Gord outside Harrington House, so we could go in together and he could talk for me if I couldn't bring myself to say anything, but that didn't work out so well. I stayed in the beach house again that night just hoping that Hopkins wouldn't turn up and kick me out in the middle of the night. I guess I was pretty stupid, because he did turn up and he did kick me out after a brief scuffle that I was too tired to get into properly. So I was stuck then in Bullworth Vale with nowhere in particular to go. It was nearing two in the morning, and I had hardly been out that late before in my life. The town was so empty at that time; there was almost nobody around, a ghost town. I figured New Coventry would be busier, full of crazies and criminals with no homes to go to, and I really didn't want to go there, but I went anyway. I wanted, for some stupid reason, to find some shithole bar and get myself drunk, just because there was nothing else to do. I didn't want to go to classes, I didn't want to talk to the other guys, especially to Gord. And most of all I didn't want to think about Derby, and because I couldn't stop it I wanted to drown all the thoughts out with cheap, strong alcohol. I didn't get to a bar though. I walked through the mist of the very early morning into New Coventry, and found that someone was walking beside me. I freaked out, twisting away from the person – just a figure, vague and unidentifiable in the fog, until a familiar voice said:  
"Relax, will you?" and Gord was there looking tired and pissed off. "What the hell are you doing out here at this time? Do you want to get killed?"  
"What?" I was thrown for a second and then I started again. "What about you, you're here too."  
"I'm looking for you, idiot. Hopkins searched me out – woke me up in the middle of the bloody night – to tell me you were sleeping in his damn beach house again and he threw you out."  
"Yeah? Well I hope you told him off for being such a jerk. He's your boyfriend; you should be able to control him." Gord laughed.  
"He's not my boyfriend! And no one could control him however much they tried. Are you going to come back with me or not?"  
"What you mean to Harrington? No, I don't want to."  
"Fine. To the beach house then. He's not going to turn you out if I'm with you. Where on earth were you going anyway?"  
"I wanted to find some drink," I told him, and felt stupid immediately, imagining his expression of scarcely hidden distaste. What would he think of me? Some scumbag alcoholic, scavenging in the night like a tramp. I caught his eye, he was smiling, but it wasn't a mocking smile, but rather a conspiratorial one.  
"Sounds like a plan then," he actually winked at me, and then grabbed a hold of my arm to pull me away from the dangerous part of town. "Drown our sorrows and all that." We walked together all the way back to the beach house, and Gord just wandered in quite unconcerned by Hopkins's complaints.  
"You can't come in here like that, I won this place," he growled, "You want me to kick you both out?"  
"Come on, Jimmy," Gord said, leaning over the little bar area and examining whatever was behind there. "You wouldn't throw me out into the cold would you? And Bif is my friend, so we can all be friends." His tone was slow and calm, like he was talking to a child. An angry and dangerous child, but a child nonetheless. Gord balanced on his tip toes, his head disappeared upside down as he raised himself up over the edge of the counter. "Hmm..." His voice came muffled from below. Hopkins glanced at me suspiciously; I was hovering by the door, uncertain of where this was going. "Aha!" Gord tipped back again, brandishing a bottle of red wine in one hand and three miniature bottles of vodka between the fingers of the other that looked like they'd been stolen from a train or something. "And there's more back there!" He sat down without ceremony on the abandoned mattress in the ground and patted it invitingly, as though he had no idea at all of the awkwardness of the situation. Hopkins snorted despairingly, but went over anyway. I was surprised, and a little disappointed. I had expected Hopkins to just leave, he never seemed too much like the type for socialising, and part of me wanted Gord to myself. Gord passed one of the little vodka bottles to Hopkins, who just held it as though he didn't know what to do. Gord opened one for himself and downed it dramatically, tipping his head right back and then down again, spluttering and laughing. He looked up at me then, a wicked shine in his eyes.  
"Come on then, I found you some drink didn't I? Come and drink it." He threw me the last vodka bottle and I caught it easily. I looked at the two of them there, Hopkins hulking and disapproving as anything, and Gord with his legs stretched out in front of him and grinning a stupid, common sort of grin. I knocked back the vodka, feeling the burn as it hit the back of my throat, and the nausea as it hit my stomach. It was nice, to know that this stuff could take away some of my thoughts for a while. I sat by Gord, and took the wine bottle from his hands. He giggled and Hopkins rolled his eyes. We drank.

The wine went down quickly and it went straight to my head. At one point, Gord instructed Jimmy to go and fetch another bottle of red wine from behind the counter, and we drank that as well. I can drink whiskey, just because I'm used to it because of Derby, but wine was another thing all together. I felt funny and sleepy and drifty, the taste of the wine and the vodka mixed in my mouth and made me feel a little bit unwell. Hopkins seemed largely unaffected, but he hadn't drunk half as much as either me or Gord, who threw the stuff back like it was water. I could see in the dim, flickering old lights, that his nose was still sore and bloodied from where I'd hit him, but he didn't seem to mind. He was rambling, his voice softer than normal, and Hopkins was staring at him as though he wasn't making any sense at all. I could hardly hear what he was saying, my head felt like it was full of cotton wool.  
"I'm just not interested," Gord was saying, waving a hand vaguely around in front of him, trying to visualise the point he was trying to make in the air. "Politics," he decided on, "is just too political. I want to just have a good time."  
"Yeah, I can tell," Hopkins muttered, and grabbed the bottle off him to take another swig.  
"No, I mean it. Why spend all the time worrying about who thinks what when you could just be enjoying life. It's much better that way. Much better."  
"It never leaves me alone though," Hopkins complained, and Gord shrugged.  
"You are a massive target, Jimmy." He giggled, stole the bottle back and offered it to me, his hand unsteady and wavering around. "Bif, darling, you're so brooding. Relax, forget about it."  
"I think I've had a bit too much," I muttered, and Gord laughed at me.  
"Can't hold your liquor? I thought you were a big strong man."  
"I'm just not an alcoholic like you are," I retorted, and then sighed and let the lights swim in front of me for a moment. I felt Gord put a hand softly on my chest and push me. I let myself lie back, felt the springs of the awful old mattress dig into my back and didn't mind. I heard Gord's voice, distantly, saying:  
"Poor old boy, it's all too much for him." I heard Jimmy Hopkins laughing a little scornful, uncaring laugh, and then a shift as the two of them stood and moved away from me. I didn't watch them go, I watched the ceiling, with its dirty, cracked wood. I tried to remember why I'd wanted to stop thinking, and then I tried to stop myself remembering. I thought of Derby, wondered where he was, and then I let the thought, the image of his face, drift away into the air.


End file.
